Snake Oil In Disguise: Useless Information Passing As Good&nbspAdvice

The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

Most of us are pretty good spotting shady SEO outfits. At the least, if someone practices enough SEO and reads enough good resources, they're aware that a company promising to have a site atop one-hundred major search engines in forty-eight hours is lying. That sort of shtick is the most obvious giveaway of a crook, but have you ever noticed how much meaningless advice passes for expert content?

I am talking about what you read on a daily basis when you do your rounds on the Internet and when you hear dubiously meaningless things said at conferences. For example, what the hell does create good content mean?

???

You can't pass a statement like that off as advice for beginners. Beginners are new to a field; they're not idiots. Every time I read or hear that, without any qualifications or additions, I think of Michael Phelps' coach sitting him down to discuss his race plans and training strategies in the lead-up to the Olympics and telling him to "go fast." Is it really likely that someone would reply, "I was under the impression that creating rubbish content was a good idea, but you've made me see the error of my ways!"

We gladly accept statements that say nothing in the same way we sit and listen to some politicians say nothing when they speak. At its best, saying a lot without saying anything is a remarkable talent. Blogs attract thousands of readers, public figures gain thousands of fans and people really can make a lot of money and build a lot of credibility by saying nothing. The only way this will stop (and, in general, it probably won't) is by communities no longer humouring it.

University sociology departments are quite good at spending a lot of money to find out what most of us already knew, but SEO and social media writers aren't bad at it either. Both parties are also good at identifying and defining elements of their topics that everyone already knows and understands. The reason they're praised for writing obvious, meaningless articles and blog posts is because most people agree with what they've written. It's easy to praise someone with whom you agree, so stating the obvious and not adding anything of meaning is an easy way to gain praise.

Here is an idea: When you see bogus content like this slithering its way up the rankings of Sphinn, desphinn it. When you stumble upon such a piece, thumb it down. When a speaker at a conference advises you to "get to know your audience," and adds nothing more, ask the person during Q&A "how?" and don't be satisfied with boilerplate, lazy answers. Don't add comments like, "I completely agree!" because that is why the piece or the speech is useless. All you can do is agree with it because it states the SEO equivalent of looking at this picture, taken out of my office window, and saying, "it's sunny in Seattle today."

There are three reasons why people spurt forth this sort of useless information:

Laziness: It's easy to put together the Top 10 Ways to Write Good Content, even if they're actually a lot better informed and a lot smarter. They could analyse a merger or deconstruct a search results page, but it looks a bit too much like hard work.

Lack of knowledge: They don't know very much, so defining the defined and pondering the pondered is the limit of what they can write.

Fear of giving away good tactics: This is more understandable, but should probably be remedied by writing less, not writing rubbish. At a conference, this is unacceptable: if people have paid the sort of money it usually costs to go to conferences in our industry, they should be treated to at least some of a speaker's more valuable knowledge.

There is a big difference between creating content for beginners and underestimating people's intelligence. Our Beginner's Guide does not belittle those who read it, and Rand's soon-to-be-released rewrite is even better. I'm also not proposing that every post or every presentation should be ground-breaking. Far from it. It's simply not possible, and we've all been guilty of phoning one in. However, we must stop paying attention and handing out praise to those people who have seemingly tricked us into believing that their brand of hot air is worth consuming over and over again. It does none of us any good, and it boils down to blatant trickery.

1. Add good content
2. Get links from authority sites in your sector
3. Get links from your competitors
4. Get to the first page on Digg
5. Create link bait
6. Get to know prominent bloggers and suck up to them
7. Get on good directories
8. Interlink your pages well
9. Write good title tags
10. Try and understand how Google's algorithm works
11. Go to conferences. Conferences are good.
12. Speculate about how search engines work without actually basing it on any experimentation
13. Find out some good tactics form industry experts

Did I miss anything?

How you ask? How the hell should I know. I told you. Go to conferences! Conferences are good.

But all joking aside. Thumbs up for this article. All SEO blogs should use it as a guideline for measuring what they post. No practical information or advice? Hit the delete button and try again.

There's no excuse for this, LaFerney. Next time thumb yourself down to 665.

Actually there was a part of me that thought it would be cool to try and keep it at the mark of the beast for as long as possible by doing just that, but since I don't fancy boiling in lava for all eternity I quickly vetoed that shenanigan.

Hey Jane. I really like the idea behind this post, but I can tell you first hand that "fighting bullshit" is not an easy task.
I will also say that most readers are lazy too--not just writers. Top X Lists became popular for a reason... because the vast majority of people in this industry are simple-minded and impatient. Writing new material and exploring new ideas just doesn't seem to pay off... mostly because the audience isn't that interested.
I have written a LOT of comments on SEOmoz that break new ground... and every time it's the same result: no one gives a damn. No one wants to "think hard" about SEO... they just want someone to tell them the answers.
Consider this: How many SEOs have taken the time to read the original papers on Google and PageRank? I mean seriously... those 2 papers explain exactly how Google and PageRank work(ed), but instead of reading them, all these SEOs would rather get their facts from Top X Lists on Sphinn.
I guess what I'm saying is... it's simply a matter of supply and demand.

Too true sir. It does appear that everyone seems to expect a fast food style solution to everything, be it SEO or any other discipline.

However don't take general laziness to mean that no one is listening, because the very reason I (and I'm sure many others) nose dived into this community was to talk to other people who are thinking about SEO, not just waiting for someone to tell them where to point and click.

because the vast majority of people in this industry are simple-minded and impatient. Writing new material and exploring new ideas just doesn't seem to pay off... mostly because the audience isn't that interested.

There are lots of good cooks who produce outstanding results by following a recipe. There are a few great chefs who create original, innovative dishes. Different things. Just because you use a recipe to bake a cake doesn't mean you're lazy.

Completely agreed. It's funny how certain phrases are like a laugh-track - we just mindlessly respond to them. Someone says "Create good content", and we all smile and nod knowingly. As a usability-oriented person, I also love hearing "Build sites for your users", to which everyone winks at each other as if they've just shared some incredible bit of insight.

The metablogs probably serve up the worst of it: "Write great titles", "Use compelling images", blah blah blah. Half the time, it's written by people who were marginally successful for reasons they can't fathom or possibly pure luck who now, by nature of that success, assume they're experts at every thing.

We used to do some PHP development for a local company who would laugh about how their SEO sales page was copied word for word from Google's Webmaster guidelines. The sad thing was, their customers ate it up.

Side note:

Glad you mentioned Sphinn. The signal to noise ratio there is abysmal. Every time someone in the community puts out a semi-new idea, there's 20 posts on Sphinn rehashing it, talking about it, and adding nothing new of value. I would desphinn them, but they've set the algo up so that a desphinn does basically nothing.

This is a kick-ass post. I am so bloody sick of seeing the pulp boil to the top of Sphinn because...because...well I don't know why people are sphinning up that vomit, they just do it reflexively I imagine.

I've heard it in sales meetings. "Well, we really want to focus on making a website that people like visiting, that they find useful to them in some way." WOW!

As an aside, I've got some great advice on how to make the most of a conference. Be likeable and give great SEO advice. Also, do yourself a favor and be very good looking.

So true, and much of this relates to why I continually whittle down my rss feeds on a regular basis. I regularly unsubscribe, desphinn, and unstumble. I am so sick of the constant rehashing that goes on in this industry. I want to read unique information that I haven't seen a million times over... that's why I come to SEOmoz :)

This is one of the many reasons I've never written anything on SEO. I'll try to help people improve implementation on their own sites, but I never feel like I have something new and valuable to say on the subject. So I'd rather write tutorials on things I do know how to do, like create budgets or use conditional PHP to modify sidebars.

Whether in SEO or other areas, I think many bloggers write crap because they feel they have to say something and don't have anything creative to say. The higher the blog's status, the greater the pressure. Not quite snake oil, more like politicians who try to reach everyone. I see this a lot in the personal finance world, where I'm also an active participant. There's only so much to say.

4th reason is that the current lay of the land rewards putting out 20 OK top 10 lists in terms if links/exposure, more so than submitting 1 great article that covers everything in a concise way. Sphinn for example seems more to me about getting brand/name exposure and networking (for the submitters) than it is about giving good & useful advice (to the readers).

I've been tasked the job of taking care of SEO here at our company, and daunting as it is, I was happy to find plenty of information.

But this issue, the whole "good content" thing, is the one thing I had the biggest difficulty with. Not only that, I actually got a tip from an associate who started by writing a contentless article as an experiment, which immediately drove traffic to his company's website. This was infuriatingly unfair, since I am categorically opposed to the whole concept.

But that's what's so frustrating -- it does actually work for people. If they keep at it for long enough, they tend to gather the traffic they seek, without putting in the required added value *cough*[insert favourite popular example]*cough*.

I thought it was me when I have been all over the internet looking for valuable information and I either get a "top secret" secret that about 10 different webpages have or some very simple advice that I already knew like basic marketing techniques. I am glad someone told it like it is. Now, there is good info out there, but you have to filter through a lot of fat to get to the meat.

I've rarely met a spammer that didn't call their computer-generated pages "unique, valuable content". Apparently, if you take a good article, then randomly switch out synonyms, it's still a good article, and since the words are different, it's now also "unique".

The problem with asking for "good content" is that if it's profitable or easy for someone to think of a particular piece of content as "good", then they will very often decide that content is good or valuable, since it's good or valuable for them.

I really like the swimming analogy - "go fast!" Can I copy that content? :-)

Taking it futher, Michael Phelps' training routine was his "content" for his Olympic races. As SEOs, we are like coaches who help clients with specific routines and training exercises. Good content can't be measured, but having a content strategy (a training plan) with a goal (# of quality posts per week, for example), is measurable. Content (posts/articles), like an athlete's training, won't help win races unless they are are intense enough to provide value.

It takes too much energy to oppose so we tend to sit there and take it. I think your post makes good sense but after reading what Bruce Clay said on their site I believe they may be right that people just have nothing to say but want to say something. Ha ha its kinda sad but true.

Should we wage war with all the bad content on the millions upon millions of websites out there? Nah. Instead we should focus our own efforts to uhmmm create good content...

I Bruce Clay and Aaron Wall both do a great job of explaining how to make good content and provide some avenues to follow. However, as an industry I believe many of us can begin creating good useful content by pointing out what parts of our industry really are scams/frauds/waste of times in an effort to rebuild our industries sagging reputation.

Jane, interesting take on the phrase... I would have to disagree with you a little about "creating good content" being a useless phrase that is thrown around. As you know, there is a nomenclature used through out the SEO and SEM industry, and I think that the concept of "good content" is ranked quite high in usage...delivered from Mr. Gates himself in his "Content is King" essay in 1996. I think the issue may be about what could qualify as good content, and one of my favorite books is "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert M. Pirsigin which Phaedrus brings up the question of "What is quality" and that can be completely subjective.

"create good content" is a "phrase of the art" of SEO, as much as SEO is a "word of the art", as both of them have no meaning in and of themselves, but when placed in context, contain inherit ideas that are vital to the understanding of a broader picture... k, maybe it didn't make sense, but it's past my bed time...

I think you are way over-thinking this. I've been to more than a few SEO/SEM conferences and a lot of the 'experts' throw out that phrase "create good content." In the blog post, Jane is more specifically referring to the neophytes of SEO. Telling them to "create good content" means nothing to them. Yes, WE know what it means because WE do this for a living. But to someone new to SEO, good content could mean anything; cool flash animation, lots of unoptimized pictures, graphic-based text that isn't SE friendly, or my personal favorite, animated icons (sweeeet!).

We've all had clients ask why they aren't ranking well and it usually starts with their title tags, domain name and lack of keyword-rich content.

Thank you for the start of a definition of what good content is. I am still new to SEO but have been creating websites since the early 90s. My definition of good content has been informative and useful information that gets the message delivered to human visitors in an effective manner. I had not been thinking of search engines.

Agreed that the intent behind the statement is always genuine: it's the lack of a definition of what "good content" is that is usually lacking.

I've heard today (in some other areas of teh webs) that this post fails in that I don't link to examples of posts, articles or other media that are the antithesis of the content I highlight about. I'd start by pointing to most of the content on this blog ;)

All kidding aside, the way to rectify posts from becoming meaningless, useless drivel is quite simple: provide examples and case studies. Analyse what the consequences of an action might be. I would have thought that was pretty obvious, but perhaps not.

I just referenced this post in a print article about writing for humans (part 3 in a monthly series, so this was a happy coincidence). I started the article by saying, " I read a blog post that made me stop and think. Now that is quality content."

For me (and I suspect a lot of people here), a writer who makes people stop and think has created "good content" (this writer is bloody good, if you ask me).

This post wasn't a tutorial on writing good content; it is about snake oil merchants at events who don't give a single example when they give advice. Jane doesn't need to prove that she knows more than those speakers.

I don't think I can stand seeing another top ten best SEO plug-ins for Word Press on Sphinn. This, just like 'create good content' is nothing more than a re-re-rehash of a topic from 3 years ago. Ironically, I look through these comments and interestingly enough, most are basically saying the same thing.

Creating Good Content is a phrase I'd heard before I got into the SEO field...but once I started doign SEO work I heard this phrase too much to the point where it is annoying. When a business owner, book writer or journalist creates something or looks to sell a product do you think they want to "Create bad content" or sell "Bad products" when they start out??? Of course not, they want to sell something or create something good!

Thats why I like Jane's example of Michael Phelps coach telling him to "swim fast". It reminds me of my Football Coach in high school telling our team as we lead 3-0 after the 1st quarter. "Fellas if they don't score any points we will win!" REALLY Coach?

Creating good content goes back to the old addage... treat others the way you want to be treated and always work to the best of your ability... = good content, good ethics and a good person

I agree with your point - completely - but, despite the fact that we've heard KIK until our ears bleed you still see an awful lot of rubbish being produced. So, did those people not get the message?

A few people have always been able to make some money by publishing pure trash (just check out the tabloids at the grocery) and for every one that does there's apparently millions who think they can. So spam persists.

"Create good content" may be trite and extremely basic, but apparently it still bears occasional reinforcement - or so many people wouldn't intentionally create rubbish.

i think the point is that nobody is telling the "how to" create good content. yeah these people are hearing "create good content" and probably believe that they are since nobody has actually explained what that is. as glicious mentioned above:

went for a conference not long....seems like a really waste of money and time listening to people telling you KEY POINTS to drive home namely: Create unique site content, understand your visitors...etc...

which is true from a macro view but wouldnt it be more justifiable for the time and money spent to be getting something more than just the macro aspect and towards the execution as well ?

I just downloaded the guide. I'm going to study it and I'm sure learn (or review) some good stuff. I've been working on my and my son's sites for a couple of months, learning alot and having some success. Now I have people asking me about helping them.

To counter the still ridiculously numerous pages advocating messing with meta tags, submitting to SEs, monthly submission to SEs (automated for a fee) etc etc and mostly from people who actually know better but want to fleece those who don't know any better i.e. beginners.
-----------------------------------------

If we're going to try and destroy the visibility of such "obvious" knowledge shouldn't we do a better job on the scammers first?

"I was under the impression that creating rubbish content was a good idea...."

I am stunned by the amount of people who tell me things similar to this. They're operating under the 1997 thinking that any content works as long as it's keyword dense enough. They don't want it to have personality or engage the audience, just increase rankings - which they still view as independent of, well, having personality and engaging the audience. Most of my clients don't have this mindset - but the ones that do are a thorn in the side of Internet marketing, and they do exist.

Jane I have been to a couple SEO and Marketing Conferences and I have to tell you last one I went was a waist of time and money. I just couldn´t believe how poor presentations were. I even paid for an extra training course they offered, that was a really bad experience. The only good part was a few contacts I got to do there.

By the way I'm seriously thinking on going to SMX New York, I considered myself an SEO with average knowledge, you guys are promoting it. Do you really recommend it?

I appreciate a good rant, and I've been enjoying the 'How to combat SEO Phonies' themes of late - the genius of this post for me was this:

"When you see bogus content like this slithering its way up the rankings of Sphinn, desphinn it. When you stumble upon such a piece, thumb it down. When a speaker at a conference advises you to "get to know your audience," and adds nothing more, ask the person during Q&A "how?" and don't be satisfied with boilerplate, lazy answers."

Because perhaps we're not doing enough to discredit these bandits. We should be running around pulling off their monster masks, revealing old man Higgins from the haunted amusement park, who in fact knows F.A. about SEO.

@ Jane without saying "way to go" or "me too" when I am talking to clients I actually get asked in that way "what is good content?" Obviously they are reading the same thing over and over on the web too...

Haven't we all had teachers that said something to the same effect?

Human nature is lazy.

In this business it has to be sleep less, think harder. Don't do the same thing over and over. Look at it from a different perspective and come up with something new or shut up.